Beaumont Hospital and the
Neighborhood Club in Grosse Pointe are entering the home stretch of a project to build a Community, Recreation and Wellness Center, just off the Village business district in the city's downtown.
Ground will be broken on the two-story building June 23. Demolition is expected in July with construction to begin by the end of summer. The plan is to open by January 2013, says Joan Phillips, vice president and chief nurse executive for integrated health services at Beaumont Hospitals.
The project has been in the planning stages since 2008.
"There's a lot of excitement about this," Phillips says.
The center will include a five-lane, warm water lap pool, a children's pool, and a fitness center, which will be integrated with adult physical therapy. There will also be sports medicine programming and athletic enhancement training as well as body mechanics for hobbies such as gardening.
Beaumont will offer adult physical therapy and a pediatric therapy center at the facility. Physical, occupational, speech and other forms of therapy will be provided. One special feature is the Center for Human Development, which provides services to children from birth to adulthood.
"It's really nice because in the past our services have all been separate," she adds. All services will be combined in a pediatric friendly environment. The Neighborhood Club will continue to run its preschool at the facility.
"It will be a chance for the children at the Center for Human Development to interact with children of normal development," she says.
All features of the center are specific to the missions of Beaumont and the Neighborhood Club, which as been the center of recreational youth sports for youth, an activity center for adults, and a source of education and enrichment in numerous topics for 100 years.
The center could be a boon to a downtown that lost one of its largest anchor tenants when Borders closed earlier this year and one of its oldest establishments, Cavanaugh's, a stationery and gift shop, closed last month. The Village, however, is seeing new life in a pizza restaurant that focuses on healthful selections and expanded outdoor seating at two of its restaurants.
Source: Joan Phillips, vice president and chief nurse executive for integrated health services at Beaumont Hospitals
Writer: Kim North Shine
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